This day, Melchor with Opera Panor is the playbook, and I got a new playbook for you, Mark

Morgan Stern. He is the CEO of Blue Mesa Partners. He's an expert of value, and I wanted to have

him on the playbook because there has been a shift in the paradigm of value and negotiation,

and I've been blessed now to have Mark welcome to the playbook.

Well, thank you so much. Look forward to talking with you and your audience.

Absolutely. Well, you know, I come from a line of great negotiators. I ran the most notable sports

agency in the world with Lee Steinberg's Sports Entertainment and Lee wrote a book about negotiation,

and a lot of people's perception of negotiation is a scarce one. It's one of a zero sum game with

winners and losers in comparison, and it's one in which there's trades and negotiation within

the context of taking value, not adding value, and so I wanted to start with just your general

perception of abundance. Do you think that negotiation can be a platform for abundant behavior,

or is it definitely a competition, a trade, is it scarce in its basic nature?

So I'll start by being uncooperative and say I never answer binary questions because I don't

believe in the concept of binary. I just will lead into what I think of negotiating.

Beautiful. So I tend to think, oops, I missed something there. I tend to think of a couple of

basic things when I'm negotiating. You know, it starts always with who is the counterparty, always.

It can't start with me. I have to figure out who they are and what they need and what they want,

and what their vocabulary is, and what's being conveyed to me when they say certain things

to make sure I hear it correctly. That's sort of at the human level because

one of my maxims is that the epicenter of every deal are people, not spreadsheets.

I think you kind of have to start with that one, right? Beautiful. The second is I, part of the

reason why the Grateful Dead is both a metaphor and it is literal in terms of having influenced me.

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